Thursday, September 15, 2011

I've been busy lately! Not all sewing but definitely some. It all started with a clean spot, isn't that always the way? I steam cleaned the carpet in the basement, and that led to painting the faux wood paneling. I've been itching to paint the basement since we bought this house 6 years ago. It's an old house and we've been picking away at renovating/improving each room over the years. Now that the boys are both in school again I have had some time to work on bigger things. My youngest is only away for 2 hours each afternoon, but I can still get some work done. He and my husband went away for the weekend and my oldest and I worked on the paneling. It had to be washed with TSP, primed with bullseye 123 and then painted. It's a lot of walls to do, and we have some furniture dowstairs so I had to work around stuff. There is still 1 corner left to do, it's my sewing area, plus a fake rock looking wall that will get a different treatment. So, this is phase 1 of updating a very dated basement living space. I'm not much of a decorator, but we'll be going to Ikea in a couple of weeks. Maybe I'll find some good things there to cozy up this playroom/tv area and the sewing side.

I think we need a long/lowish bookcase along the wall under the window.

The door to the furnace/sewing room. I still need to put the ceiling panel back up. Shaw was here hooking up cable and they needed access in there. I know, the couches are icky. We have 2 little boys... You can see the rock wall here. I'm going to paint it light grey, then let it dry before rubbing dark grey into the grooves.

I freshened up the white sides to the stairs. They were badly chipped and worn looking.

The door to the laundry/utility room. I've since finshed painting the door/trim and replaced the doorknob. To the left is my sewing area. I think I will paint it very light blue.

This is what the paneling looked like before. Ick, right?

A few days ago we were shopping and I found a good deal on a nice king size sheet set. I washed them yesterday and put them on the bed. We don't use a flat sheet so I went to put the dark brown sheet into the closet with the other linens and then I had an idea. The new sheet coordinated nicely with the old one that we had never used so I thought I should sew them together to make a duvet cover. I sewed three sides together and threw it on the bed. It looked perfect! Until last night we each had our own blanket since we didn't have a king size duvet. The bed was always a mismatch of a queen size quilt and a twin size boy themed duvet cover. We were at Costco last night and found a really nice king size wool duvet for a great price. It fits perfectly into the duvet cover I made out of the flat sheets. I had left the bottom open so I could close it up at the right length. I measure it against the duvet and then sewed 2/3 of the bottom closed. Presto! A coordinated grown-up bed set. After 12 years, this is our first matched set.

I used the tops of the sheets as the top edges of the cover. There is an embroidered strip across the top of the front and the back that coordinated with the pillow cases

Last is a picture I took of my little guy on our way to kindergarten. He's wearing a few things I made. Backpack, raincoat and pants. Just wanted to share because it's cute.